


the proper scientific analysis

by duets



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, TXF AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 11:37:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5455148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duets/pseuds/duets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>homin and txf au no one asked for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the proper scientific analysis

**Author's Note:**

> the sooyoung here is red velvet's joy because she's the other bratty maknae i never knew i would love and *yet*.

 

 

 

It isn’t a punishment.

It’s a _promotion_.

That’s what Boa tells him, five minutes into turning Changmin’s life on its head. ("You'll be our spy!" "No." "You don't have a choice." "No.") Her smirk from that particular feat is still firmly in place, already half bored with Changmin's panic widened eyes, if still highly amused. At his existence, but also the situation. 

“ _What_.”

A promotion.

“It really is,” she reassures him. Changmin emerges from his fear for a second to openly roll his eyes at that, because _really_ , and also because he has no sense of self preservation.

He knows she isn't done, though.

Boa’s smile widens. “It isn’t punishment, but. If you don’t play nice, it _could_ be.”

She’s two feet tall. Changmin should not be this intimidated.

He tries to see the silver lining, then.

“Do I get a gun?”

Boa stares at him like Changmin is a dog asking if it can have chocolate for dinner. Which is unfair. He owns _Halo_. He knows his way around guns.

Whatever.

“Do I get a baton at least, or a badge--”

“About that,” she says, cringing, then pausing as if searching for the right way to break this to him.

Which is hilarious, considering how she’d just unceremoniously dropped the news over his head a second ago, but whatever.

Changmin waits. He hopes he gets a taser. He also hopes the feeling in his stomach isn't an ulcer.

“Yeah?” he lets the last syllable drag a little when the silence gets too much, impatient and panicked.

Boa swallows. “You're... gonna get a, huh. Partner,” she says, finally, voice tinny as she jokes.

Because she enjoys watching Changmin squirm. Right. Which. Fair enough.

He's a brat. Fair.

Still, that was a very tasteless joke.

Changmin tells her as much, voice grave. “That's not a good quip, noona. Low, even for you.”

He waits for her to threaten to staple his mouth shut, but instead all he gets is an apologetic smile.

He freezes.

“Sorry, Changmin-ah.”

The last time Boa called him that was at a _funeral_. Fuck.

“Fuck,” he says.

She reaches over to pat his hand. He panics even more at that.

“It can't be all that bad,” she says, moving over her desk to touch his head, awkward, petting Changmin like she's touching something vaguely toxic. "You'll have fun!" she says.

He's hyperventilating. He may also die if Boa continues to muss his bangs like that. Seeming to sense his imminent death, she ceases the petting abruptly, sitting back and cringing apologetically. She stares at her hand like it had betrayed her.

"Noona."

Changmin doesn't sound pleading. He's incapable of sounding like _anything_ at this stage.

"It will be like Harry Potter! Spying!" she raises her eyes to look at him. " _Aliens."_ Her voice sounds overly energetic, a little manic, even. Which is close enough to normal and to  _no touching_ that it sets Changmin a little bit at ease, despite the whole situation.

Because honestly, the thing is that Changmin is _not_ prone to fatalism.

"You'll have fun! Really."

So he leaves Boa’s office with the promise of a badge. _Maybe_ a gun. If he trains. Yay.

He leaves the office believing her.

A partner. Yeah.

It can't be all that bad.

 

 

 

He starts to doubt that theory when he walks into the office the next day to Sooyoung jumping seemingly out of _hell_ to snatch his arm and drag him to her cubicle. 

She sits in her overpriced leather chair and makes him _crouch_ to her height. She keeps whispering for him to be quiet. They're the only ones in the office this early.

Kyuhyun snores from two cubicles over.

Kyuhyun doesn’t count as a person.

“Sunbaenim,” Sooyoung whispers, frantic, looking over the cubicle’s plastic wall to search for eavesdroppers. Her nails are digging into Changmin's shirt, through his skin and muscles and into his _bones_. “Have you _heard_.”

Changmin is starting to lose some circulation in his arm, but he nods and responds anyway, patient like she's one of his sisters. 

Which means, not necessarily really patient at all.

“ _What_ , Sooyoung-ah.”

She turns to look at him, rolls her eyes. The brat. Her nails are like claws. She's a tiny, insubordinate Wolverine. So just a regular Wolverine. She drags him closer without even breaking a sweat and Changmin is half happy she finally took those self-defence classes and half afraid for his continued existence.

“You got demoted yesterday, yes?” she demands.

It’s like staring into a tiny, angry mirror. A tiny, annoying brat of a mirror.

“ _Pro_ moted--”

“Whatever,” she cuts him off, an impatient hiss. He is a terrible influence. Somebody else should have overseen her internship. “Minho oppa said he heard from Kyuhyun oppa who heard from Donghae oppa that unnie is sending you off to the--” and here her voice drops to a scared whisper like she’s talking about a murderous gwisin haunting their building and not work. “To the _X-Files_ , sunbae.”

Changmin works at fucking _preschool_ apparently.

“Is this going somewhere, Sooyoung, because I still haven’t had my coffee--”

She lets go of his arm in favour of pinching the bridge of her nose. Changmin moves his arm a little. The bones of his _clavicle_ creak painfully. Is she the _Hulk_.

“Sooyoung--”

“Listen,” she snaps, cutting off his reproachful rant. He hasn't been able to finish a sentence with her since she got her master’s. He's proud, but also annoyed. “They're giving you off to _him_.”

Changmin blinks.

“To… Kangta…?”

Sooyoung stares at him like he's a particularly stubborn bacteria who she's trying to teach math to and not his senior.

"Sunbae,” she tries again, very slowly, the honorific barely registering when she sounds so very disappointed in his slowness.

He blinks again. She stares some more, then sighs, long suffering and pissed. Changmin feels a surge of disgruntled fondness.

Brat.

"They are sending you off to _him_ ,” she repeats. “ _The_ him, sunbae. You know who. _You know_.”

She grabs at his shoulders then, turning fully on her chair, her eyes wide and serious, to face him head on. Her voice keeps dropping like she is sharing a plot for the prime minister's assassination uncovered a little too late and not just bullpen gossip.

Changmin has no fucking clue why she keeps mixing Korean and English, and why she keeps making it sound like it is someone's name.

Sooyoung blinks.

And then it dawns on him.

" _Shit_ ," he says, eloquently, inappropriately. He has a headache.

He may be dying.

Sooyoung lets him go, slouches on her chair, letting out an exhausted breath. She sighs out a _yeah, him_ that sounds half enamored, half ominous.

Changmin curses again, just for good measure.

 

 

 

Changmin had joined the forces because he had a medical degree and nothing better to do with his time after residency.

He joined so he wouldn't become a professor after the army.

He joined because Kyuhyun drunk dared him to.

Changmin joined the forces because he had watched _Infernal Affairs_ too many times.

He joined for-- listen, _whichever_ reason, one that doesn't matter in the end. The thing is: Changmin is bad at being told what he can and cannot do.

So Changmin had joined because he _could_ , and he had stayed because Yunho told him he _wouldn’t_.

 

*

*

*

*

 

 

 


End file.
